Mariah Carey's lacklustre dance moves during recent shows have made world headlines - and now her recently-fired choreographer has spoken out against his former employer, saying her phoned-in performances are "typical Mariah."
Anthony Burrell was Carey's choreographer and creative director until he was fired in the wake of her New Year's Eve fiasco. Carey was due to perform two of her hits live on TV in Times Square during the countdown to 2017 - but was apparently unable to hear her backing track, so instead stood mute for much of her time on stage.
It was a trainwreck of a performance, and it seems it set the tone for Mariah's year to come, with multiple clips surfacing in recent months showing the Fantasy singer looking bored and vacant on stage in recent shows, barely performing listless dance moves and whistling her way through her hits.
In an interview with Complex, Burrell said he wasn't surprised to see the recent spate of damning videos.
"It's just typical Mariah. Mariah is clear: when she doesn't wanna do something, she doesn't do it. She's performing with lacklustre and no f**ks given, and it's taking away her star," he said.
"Working with an artist like Mariah, who's not a mover first, it's always a challenge to get them to think physically and not just vocally. You always have to keep in mind that they're a singer first. The priority is not teaching them 100 counts of 8, or endless routines. I wanted to give Mariah a modern push to revamp her, give her a fresher, more modern feel, make her more aware of her body and her lines, and not look like her feet hurt when she's walking," he continued.
Burrell blamed Carey's team for "not guiding and directing" the multi-million-selling star.
"It felt like they were so new at their jobs, and had no direction. When you're green, you're playing things by trial and error, and there were a lot of errors. I was very vocal about things that weren't right. When you try to take a shortcut and you don't know the clues, you're bound to get f**ked up or screwed, because you don't have the experience of running a tour or a billion-dollar empire."
See for yourself just how much Carey's onstage moves have changed since her 90s heyday in the side-by-side clip below: